GREAT BASIN PROBLEMS 
227 
built by modern man, under a rainless sky, such studies are amply 
justified. Such survey work is always first in order, in scientific 
studies derived primarily from the peculiarities of any region. 
The soils of the Great Basin bear a definite relationship to Lake 
Bonneville and Lake Lahontan and the other lakes of that period. 
Most of the valley soils, which constitute the major part of the 
agricultural area of the Basin, have been laid down under the 
waters of these lakes. Then, as the climate changed, and the lakes 
vanished, long time periods of aridity prevailed. Little or no water 
drained through the soils. Much sunshine, rapid and large oscilla¬ 
tions of temperance, together with other factors of aridity, pro¬ 
duced soils which are distinct from the soils of the countries in 
which modern science has developed. 
These arid soils contain much soluble matter from which, when 
concentrated by irrigatfon or othewise, the feared “alkali” is 
formed. Irrigation upon arid soils may always produce alkali, un¬ 
less the practice is guarded. The future of the Great Basin, as 
the home of a modern civilization, depends on our success in con¬ 
trolling the “alkali.” Here is one of the real research problems of 
the Great Basin. It is a problem worthy of the keenest tools of the 
chemist, the physicist, the mathematician and the biologist. The 
limits of so-alled “pure” science must be advanced, before applied 
science can bring alkali under full control and make of it an ally 
rather than an enemy in reclaiming the deserts of the Great Basin. 
There would be no permanent community population, and there¬ 
fore no science or scientific'gatherings in the Great Basin, were it 
not for irrigation. When water is applied to arid land desert yields 
and garden is born. 
The groves of trees in this valley, as far as the eye can reach, and 
the miles of cultivated fields, are the products of irrigation. The 
art of irrigation, however, was born out of the stem necessity of 
the settler upon an arid land, and only in recent years has it be¬ 
come a subject of scientific study. Sunshine, air, soil and water, 
are the primary factors of plant-growth. Sunshine and air are 
beyond the control of man; the soil only measurably so; but under 
conditions of irrigation, in an arid land, the water-factor is almost 
wholly under control. Every worker in science recognizes the vast 
possibilities in the possession of one controlled factor out of four. 
Already, irrigation investigations have revealed possibilities of 
